‘I told you the other night that I liked your face. This is not all. My housekeeper, who has kindred in this district, informs me that you have worked some marvellous cure upon her husband’s brother’s second cousin’s wife’s sister. The relationship is remote, but the rumour of your skill has reached my servant. Will you come this way at your convenience? Don’t come out of your way on purpose to see me. My means, as I informed you, and as you might see for yourself in all my surroundings, are scanty, and I can afford to pay very little more than the poorest among your patients. I state the case thus plainly that there may be no future disagreement.—Truly yours, ‘HOMER SIVEWRIGHT.’ ‘Is the old man a miser; or an enthusiast, who has sacrificed himself and his granddaughter to his love of art? Equally hard upon the granddaughter in either case,’ reflected Lucius, trying to contemplate the business in the chilly light of common sense, wondering at and half-ashamed of the sudden delight which had moved him when he found that Mr. Sivewright’s letter was nothing less than a passport to Lucille Sivewright’s home. ‘I’ll go the instant I’ve dined,’ he said to himself, giving another tug at the loose bell-wire. ‘Yet who knows whether the old churl will let me see his interesting granddaughter? Perhaps he’ll put me on a strictly professional footing; have me shown up to his den by that old woman, and shown down again without so much as a glimpse of Lucille’s pensive face. Yet he can hardly pay me badly and treat me badly too. I’ll ask permission to attend him as a friend; and then perhaps he’ll melt a little, and admit me to his hearth. I like the look of that old wainscoted room, with its bare floor and clean-swept hearth, and handful of bright fire. It seemed to breathe the poetry of poverty.’ Mrs. Babb came clattering in with the tea-things and chop all together, profuse in apologies for having forgotten to wind up the kitchen clock, and thus become oblivious as to time. ‘On a clear day I can see the clock at the public round the corner by stretching my head out of the back-attic window,’ she said; ‘but being thick to-day I couldn’t, and I must have been an hour behind ever since dinner. And the fire gone out too!’ The fire was quickly lighted; the kettle carried off to boil down-stairs; but Lucius didn’t wait for his tea. That gentle decoction, which was, in a general way, the very support of his life, to-night was almost indifferent to him. He ate his chop, ran up to his narrow dressing-room, where the weekly cleansing process had left a healthy odour of mottled soap and a refreshing dampness, washed away the smoke and grime of the day with much cold water, changed all his garments, lest he should carry the taint of fever-dens whither he was going, and went forth as gaily as to a festival.